The agreement for Pedro Sánchez's investiture as head of new Spanish government is not closed, at least as far as the negotiations with Together for Catalonia (Junts) are concerned. This has been confirmed by different sources from this party consulted by ElNacional.cat after this Thursday morning its permanent management committee met in Brussels in a meeting headed by the Catalan president-in-exile, Carles Puigdemont. An electronic meeting of the executive is planned for this afternoon. Despite everything, and amidst a morning of nerves due to a succession of meetings and announcements of agreements between the Socialists (PSOE) and the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), Junts insists that the negotiations continue.
Carles Puigdemont's party is maintaining its demands on the pending "loose ends", which would essentially affect the amnesty law, while ERC announced this morning that it has already closed its agreement with the Socialists, regarding not only the amnesty, but also the transfer to Catalonia of the Rodalies rail service, and the financing arrangements for the Catalan government. In fact, today the acting Spanish presidency minister, Félix Bolaños, and the ERC party president, Oriol Junqueras, met in Barcelona to sign the agreement and Junqueras is scheduled to appear at his party's headquarters this Thursday afternoon in Barcelona to explain the terms of the pact. For his part, Bolaños will appear with the first secretary of the Catalan Socialists (PSC), Salvador Illa, from the Catalan party's offices.
Junts had also set up a lectern in the Brussels hotel where the party leadership is meeting, which has been interpreted as meaning that Puigdemont's appearance to announce the agreement would also occur today.
Not in a rush
Despite all this, and after the morning of meetings in the Belgian capital, Junts insists that they have not closed the final agreement and that talks with the PSOE are still underway. The scope of the amnesty law is thought to be one of the issues still on the table. The Junts meeting is being held in the same hotel where, on September 5th, Puigdemont set out the party's conditions it sought for an agreement on voting for Sánchez's investiture, including the amnesty for those facing independence process prosecutions, the recognition of the democratic legality of the independence movement and a mediator to take part in negotiations between Catalonia and the Spanish state.
Three months later, Puigdemont's party says it is in no rush to close the deal. This is the official line right now, amid the ongoing war of nerves. Although the PSOE is seeking to schedule the investiture debate for next week, the deadline for a vote in Congress does not expire until November 27th, so Junts is acting to avoid being swept along in the momentum that the PSOE and ERC have wanted to mark.